
Class 12 5 
Book 



HdG 



THE NEW (GERMAN) 
TESTAMENT 



BY 



ANTHONY HOPE 



METHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON 



THREEPENCE NET 



THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 



THE NEW (GERMAN) 
TESTAMENT 

SOME TEXTS AND A COMMENTARY 



BY 

ANTHONY HOPE 



THIRD EDITION 



METHUEN & GO. LTD. 

36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 

LONDON 



116^ 









First Published . . December gth igi4 
Second Edition . . January 26th igis 



^ 1919 






CONTENTS 



I 

PAGE 

THE BLESSINGS OF — WAR . . .7 



II 

GREAT Britain's blunder . . .20 

III 

PAPER bulwarks . . . • 3^ 

IV 

empire — AND LIBERTY? . . '5^ 



THE NEW 
(GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

I 

THE BLESSINGS OF— WAR 

WE have all been on the wrong 
tack— we, the nations great and 
small — who have counted ourselves civi- 
lized and Christian ; the great and 
populous nations who have worked for 
peace and often imposed it by diplo- 
macy ; the numerically weak nations 
who have accepted peace as a per- 
manent and honourable condition of 
their independent life. 

Lamentably wrong have our states- 
men been, with their efforts after peace, 
their Hague Conferences, Arbitration 
Treaties, Arbitration Commissions, pro- 
hibition of armaments on the Great 



8 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

Lakes of North America, and so forth. 
Lamentably wrong our Churches, with 
their ministers preaching peace and 
praying for it, with their congregations 
in their millions breathing the same 
prayer to the Throne of God. And how 
pitiable to think that we have deluded 
even our little children into lisping 
prayers for peace and into conceiving 
of the august and gracious figure of the 
Founder of their religion as the Prince 
of Peace ! 

We have indeed recognized that peace 
is not to be purchased at any and every 
price, that we must fight in the 
cause of national independence, or vital 
interest, or dear honour, going indeed 
so far as sometimes to fight merely 
because we promised to — a quixotic pro- 
ceeding in the sincerity of which it is 
wellnigh impossible to believe ! But 
we have been at a wrong angle of vision 
all the same. We thought we were 
accepting a mighty evil to escape from 
a mightier. We have tried to escape 
these mightier evils by other means. 



THE BLESSINGS OF— WAR 9 

We have dared to dream of the time 
when the sense of right, justice, and 
human comradeship would be our shield 
and buckler, and when the last remedy of 
war would be no more needed. In this 
dream we may have accused ourselves, 
in despondent hours, of being visionary 
and Utopian. We were, in fact, some- 
thing much worse than that, as will 
speedily appear. 

Germany knows better about all this ; 
at least, Prussia does ; or, at all 
events, the Prussian generals do — 
witness General von Bernhardi, whose 
book " Germany and the Next War " 
is now enjoying a prominence which 
must be counted well-deserved. The 
book, written some three years ago, is 
primarily an exhortation to the German 
nation ; but other nations may naturally 
take an interest in it at the present time. 
Unless his translator (on whom my 
ignorance of German compels me to 
rely) wrongs him, the General, though 
not a vivacious writer, is admirably 
lucid, and can say what he means as 



10 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

well as anybody. The Germans, he 
says in his Introduction, " have to-day 
become a peace-loving — an almost too 
peace-loving — nation." (I do not know 
how far this reproach is just ; but, if 
it is, one may be allowed to be sorry 
for them just now.) "We are accus- 
tomed," he remarks regretfully, ** to 
regard war as a curse, and refuse to 
recognize it as the greatest factor in the 
furtherance of culture and power." 

Again : ** I must first of all examine 
the aspirations for peace, which seem to 
dominate our age, and threaten to poison 
the soul of the German people, accord- 
ing to their true moral significance." 
Poison I A strong word ! We begin to 
see how wrong we have been in our 
notions — instilling this " poison " of a 
love of peace into the veins even of 
our children 1 

" I must try to prove that war is not 
merely a necessary element in the life 
of nations, but an indispensable factor 
of culture, in which a truly civilized 
nation finds the highest expression of 



THE BLESSINGS OF— WAB 11 

strength and vitality." That we took 
altogether too low a view of war is 
obvious. We have done nothing like 
justice to it. It is not a desperate 
remedy : it is an uncommonly good 
thing in itself. 

In fact it is so good a thing that 
people who profess to hate it are mostly 
just humbugging. " Pacific ideals, to 
be sure, are seldom the real motive of 
their action. They usually employ the 
need of peace as a cloak under which 
to promote their own political aims. 
This was the real position of affairs at 
the Hague Conference, and this is also 
the meaning of the action of the United 
States of America, who in recent times 
earnestly tried to conclude treaties for 
the establishment of Arbitration Courts, 
first and foremost with England, but also 
with Japan, France, and Germany." 
America is pretty well shown up — with 
her talk about peace and brotherhood, 
and blood being thicker than water I 

" War is a biological necessity of the 
first importance, a regulative element in 



12 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

the life of mankind which cannot be 
dispensed with, since without it an un- 
heahhy development will follow, which 
excludes every advancement of the race, 
and therefore all real civilization." And 
we dreamed of abolishing it — at all 
events, of restricting it to the narrowest 
limits and the most inevitable occasions ! 
Whereas it appears that, if we have not 
got a casus belli, we ought to find one 
as soon as possible. So long as the 
General has his way, we may easily be 
presented with one without looking 
for it. 

But war is more than a biological 
necessity. " Might is at once the 
supreme right, and the dispute as to 
what is right is decided by the arbitra- 
ment of war. War gives a biologically 
just decision, since its decisions rest on 
the very nature of things." So that 
nationality, liberty, aggression, treaties 
("scraps of paper"), etc., go for 
nothing, and we are just as wrong in 
considering them as in working or 
praying for peace. 



THE BLESSINGS OF— WAR 13 

War has done very well already in 
the General's hands ; its virtues are not 
exhausted yet. " It is not only a 
biological law but a moral obligation 
and, as such, an indispensable factor in 
civilization." 

Now even we, in spite of our mis- 
takes, should not deny that war may be 
on occasion a moral obligation, either 
towards ourselves or towards others. 
But there is a vast difference be- 
tween " is " and " may be." The 
latter suggests the contingent and occa- 
sional, the former the normal and 
regular. The General's point of view 
is clear by his addition — *' an indispen- 
sable factor in civilization." Indispen- 
sable factors are not things endured 
reluctantly and occasionally ; they are 
permanent and necessary — and pre- 
sumably not very rare — features. Such 
is the position war holds in the General's 
conception of civilization. He makes 
this entirely clear as he proceeds to a 
rapturous eulogy of the virtues of war, 
fortified by quotations from Treitschke, 



14 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

Schiller, and Frederick the Great. He 
makes it notably clear by his illu- 
minating observation that these virtues 
get no fair scope in " the pitiable 
existence of all small States." 

" The pitiable existence of all small 
States ! " We may suppose that Bel- 
gium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland 
(to name no more) will see themselves 
as they really are in the light of these 
words. Perhaps we — and they — may 
also suppose with some plausibility that 
the General, if he has his way, will be 
charitable enough to relieve them from 
their pitiable existence as small States ; 
he will put them out of their misery — 
as small States. 

'What will he do with them if he has 
his way? He does not, so far as I 
can find, say explicitly — he is more 
occupied in disposing of greater Powers 
— but farther on in the book he remarks 
with much emphasis : *' In the future 
the importance of Germany will depend 
on two points : firstly, how many 
millions of men in the world speak 



THE BLESSINGS OF— WAR 15 

German ; secondly, how many of them 
are poUtically members of the German 
Empire." In the light of this, and 
in view of the General's undoubted 
patriotism, it is not perhaps hard to 
conclude how the pitiable existence of 
the small States is to be brought to a 
merciful conclusion. 

And to what end does the biological 
necessity work, the biologically just de- 
cisions tend? What is to be the reward 
of observing the moral obligation and 
of cherishing and promoting the indis- 
pensable factor in civilization? For the 
General as a German the answer is 
plain. " Thus alone," he says, " shall 
we discharge our great duties of the 
future, grow into a World Power, and 
stamp a great part of humanity with 
the impress of the German spirit." 
That is the answer for Germany — a vast 
and indefinite expansion of the German 
spirit, of the German culture of later 
days which has produced and which 
inspires the General's political philoso- 
phy. For Germany so far, so good. 



16 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

We understand the answer. It is frank 
and plain--^and it does not take us by 
surprise. 

What is the answer for other nations? 

For the small nations we have seen 
it already. They are to be stamped with 
the impress of the German spirit ; their 
** pitiable existences " are to be ended. 
We may borrow a phrase current in 
another connection. A steam-roller is 
to be passed over them — the steam- 
roller not of Russian troops but of 
Prussian notions ; the steam-roller not 
of a campaign but of a conception and 
a culture — the culture that fosters the 
General's philosophy and the Prussian 
military system. An end to their 
national existence, to their national 
idealS;, to the rich diversity of civiliza- 
tion to which the world has owed so 
much and from which it had such hopes 
in the future ! No independent voice 
is to be raised from the land that was 
the home of Ibsen, no independent 
dreams of beauty from the country that 
gave us Maeterlinck ! Where the steam- 



THE BLESSINGS OF— WAR 17 

roller has passed nothing is to be heard 
but the accents of the culture which has 
produced the General's philosophy and 
inspired the Prussian military system. 

What is the answer for the great 
nations ? 

For France ? But we may leave 
France out. The General himself gives 
the answer. " France must be so com- 
pletely crushed that she can never again 
come across our path." France is to 
be steam-rollered ! And at least a 
pretty broad edge of the machine may 
be expected to pass over her Allies also. 

But what is the answer for the great 
nations not engaged in the war ? Or are 
all to be engaged? Is the whole world 
to be stamped — and stamped out? Even 
the General can hardly expect that. 
Well, then, what is the prospect for 
these great nations and for the lands 
they people and administer? The 
General's philosophy, though invented 
and patented in Germany, can hardly 
be limited to that country. If it be 
successful, other nations will help, them- 



18 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

selves to licences for its employment. 
They too will recognize the biological 
law ; they too will seek, by that Might 
which is the supreme Right, biologically 
just decisions ; they will not neglect the 
moral obligation, nor suffer the indis- 
pensable factor in civilization to lie idle. 
They too, converted by the General's 
philosophy, will seek war and ensue it. 
Because to the General's converts war 
is not a calamity which must be faced 
sometimes — which must happen some- 
times — owing to human fault or frailty : 
it is a thing which ought to happen 
normally, in the interests of a nation's 
spirit and culture. 

Behold, then, the prospect that lies 
before the world if the General's phil- 
osophy triumphs in the schools, and the 
military system which it inspires repeats 
the triumph in the field ! For the small 
nations extinction — political, intellectual, 
spiritual. For the great nations an end- 
less strife, generation after generation 
of mankind locked in deadly and bloody 
struggles. And no end to it, no hope, 



THE BLESSINGS OF- WAR 10 

no dream, of an end to it I For war will 
be not merely a thing which must 
happen : it will be a thing which ought 
to happen. It will not only be a neces- 
sity : it will also be an ideal, and he 
who prays, *' Give peace in our time, 
O Lord I " will be sinning against his 
country and his own soul. 

Whereupon that discredited creature, 
the Angel of Peace, will spread her 
wings, soar to the heavens to report the 
failure of her mission, and leave the 
earth to enjoy for ever the blessings 
of war. 



II 

GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 

A MAN generally knows whether 
he is a knave or not, but generally 
does not know whether or not he is a 
fool. Hence he would sooner be called 
knave than fool. If he is a knave, he 
cannot much resent the accusation ; if 
his conscience is clear, he dismisses it 
with a smile. But to taunt him with 
being a fool makes him uneasy and sets 
him on self-examination. 

It is the same with nations, and hence 
it comforts a nation to find its enemies 
imputing to it not folly or blindness but 
a long-headed cunning, even though 
the cunning ascribed to it be untram- 
melled by scruples to a degree which 
it would not itself be willing for a 

20 



GBEAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 21 

moment to admit. England had sooner 
be called perfidious than a blockhead. 

Her enemies, as a rule, fall in with 
her preference, imputing to her a con- 
sistent, unscrupulous, and supremely 
able policy of self-interest which seems 
to Englishmen themselves as much 
above their intellectual capacity as it is 
below their most modest conception of 
their own morals. 

But England is not quite the perfect 
villain. She has had her lapses ; she 
has missed her chance now and then. 
She has not always hit her man on the 
head when he was least able to hit back ; 
she has not always stabbed him in the 
back when he was fighting somebody 
else in front — not always, however much, 
of course, she may, in certain eyes, under 
various fine pretexts about treaties and 
neutral rights, be doing it now. 

One sore lapse of this kind that 
notable exponent of German policy and 
principles. General von Bernhardi, is 
good enough to point out to his country- 
men and to us in his book " Germany 



22 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

and the Next War." »He is much struck 
with it ; he refers to it more than once . 
Here are a couple of passages — I quote 
from the EngUsh translation of the 
book : — 

" Since England committed the un- 
pardonable blunder, from her point of 
view, of not supporting the Southern 
States in the American War of Seces- 
sion, a rival to England's world-wide 
Empire has appeared on the other side 
of the Atlantic in the form of the 
United States of North America, 
which are a grave menace to England's 
fortunes." 

Again : " This policy [i.e. the German 
policy of not effecting " a final settling 
of accounts with France " at a favour- 
able moment] somewhat resembles the 
supineness for which England has her- 
self to blame, when she refused her 
assistance to the Southern States in the 
American War of Secession, and thus 
allowed a Power to arise, in the form 
of the United States of North America, 
which already, although barely fifty 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 23 

years have elapsed, threatens England's 
own position as a World Power." 

I am not old enough — just not old 
enough — to remember the War of Seces- 
sion, but I have talked with many who 
remember those days well, and we have 
all read many books about that troubled 
and momentous time. Everybody knows 
that there was a great deal of sympathy 
for the South in England, especially 
among the upper classes, even more 
powerful politically then than now. 
Everybody knows that war nearly came 
about by reason of it^ but was avoided 
— happily and mercifully avoided, as we 
Englishmen have been in the habit of 
saying, till General von Bernhardi came 
along to teach us to say " unhappily and 
stupidly evaded " ! Everybody knows 
that in the end the preponderance of 
opinion in England imposed not mter- 
vention on the Northern side but a 
neutrality which left the sad but splendid 
conflict to be fought out without foreign 
interference — to be fought out by men 
on both sides who believed that they 



24 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

fought in a righteous cause, for which 
they were ready and bounden, not only 
to lay down their own lives but to take 
the lives of their fellow-countrymen — 
aye, of their own brethren, if need be. 
History lays her wreath of laurel on 
the graves of the heroes of the North 
and of the South alike. And the Great 
Republic lives. 

That was what Great Britain did. 
What does General von Bernhardi, with 
his Prussian politico -military philosophy 
and principles, say that she ought to 
have done— only her supineness and 
unpardonable blundering prevented her 
from doing it? For her there should 
have been no nonsense about which side 
was right, no nonsense about generous 
and disinterested sympathy with the 
South's strong Constitutional case and 
splendid pluck on the one side, or with 
the sentiment of national unity, the cause 
of the slaves, or the dogged and perse- 
vering valour which drew hearts to the 
other side. All these were simply 
irrelevant. Great Britain — if she would 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 25 

not be supine and stupid — had simply 
to ask, "What will pay me best?" 
And simply to answer, " Helping the 
South." Why? ''Because by Jielplng 
the South I shall in the long run cripple 
both South and North. By helping one 
I shall hurt both'' 

How were we to achieve that master- 
stroke of policy against a friendly and 
kindred people? Very simply. We 
were to provide the Federal States (the 
United States would no longer have 
existed ! ) with a neighbour — an armed 
and angry neighbour. The Confederate 
States a nation, perpetually a rival, 
always potentially a foe ! Hatred and 
rivalry between themselves were to keep 
Americans busy, their hands filled with 
that, while the astute Britisher filled his 
pockets with the trade that his cousins 
had not time to attend to ! 

Why were we so stupid? Why did 
we make the unpardonable blunder of 
not adopting a policy so astute, so 
profitable, so thoroughly worthy of a 
great nation, claiming to be in the van 



26 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

of civilization and culture ? Because this 
policy appears to be that which recom- 
mends itself, in the light of history, to 
what is the greatest and finest civiliza- 
tion of all — the present German variety. 

Well, we must concede this much to 
General von Bernhardi and his theory 
of our unpardonable blunder : we did 
not adopt the policy because, among 
other reasons, it never entered our 
heads. There may have been a few 
Machiavellis (or Bernhardis) about, but 
our people as a whole were guided by 
their sympathies, by their prejudices if 
you will ; the question of self-interest 
was not present to their minds. 

But if it had been? I think I know 
what the attitude of the British people 
would have been towards such a policy ; 
but I have no desire to indulge in strong 
language about the moral and political 
principles which inspire the German (or 
perhaps I should say Prussian) state- 
craft of which the General is so dis- 
tinguished and resolute a champion. 
The important thing is that the free 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 27 

peoples of the world — the peoples them- 
selves, and not merely their politicians 
and their professors — should understand 
what the canons of this statecraft are. 
When once the free peoples under- 
stand we are content to abide by their 
verdict. 

For though I have chosen — and of 
course purposely chosen — an example of 
this statecraft which has a special 
interest for Americans as well as for 
ourselves, the question itself is a much 
wider one, and has an actual, not merely 
an historical, interest for all the nations, 
as well as for the combatants in 
the present great struggle. For this 
struggle, immense and terrible as it is, 
is but a step, an incident, in the world- 
policy which General von Bernhardi ex- 
pounds. If it ends as he would have it 
end, on his own principles his cry must 
still be " Onward ! " 

The world is being asked to-day to 
choose between two conceptions of 
national policy and duty. There has 
been no more momentous question put 



28 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

to it since history began. And it must 
be answered. Quo VadisP The ques- 
tion is put to the civilized world. 

Let us try to sketch, briefly and 
roughly, what has been among civilized 
peoples the ideal of national policy in 
international affairs in recent times. It 
is with ideals that we are dealing. No 
doubt all nations have occasionally 
sinned against the light, more or less 
purposely, more or less consciously, 
always (I think) in face of a strong 
protest from a strong minority of their 
own citizens, and generally with a swift 
return to a worthier mind. What has 
been this ideal ? 

The State is a trustee for its citizens. 
It is bound to assert, maintain, and pro- 
mote their rights and their interests. Its 
first duty is to them ; it must not, 
without their express sanction, practise 
charity or benevolence to other nations 
at their expense. It is to guard also 
their honour and see that their voice in 
the counsels of the world receives the 
respect which is its due. But it is to 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 29 

exercise these functions with a due 
regard to the rights and legitimate 
interests of other nations. It is to 
observe not only international law but 
international morals — and even inter- 
national manners. It is to respect the 
national life and the freedom of its 
neighbours. Though vigilant in its own 
cause, it is yet to be a good member 
of the community of nations. 

Something like this, perhaps, is what 
an average citizen of a free and civi- 
lized country expects of his Government 
in dealing with other civilized countries. 
The case of barbarous countries, with 
their peculiar (and very difficult) moral 
problems, need not here detain us. As 
between civilized nations something like 
this is, if not a realized standard, at 
least a possible and perhaps not distant 
ideal, something at which we have been 
aiming and towards which we conceived 
ourselves to be progressing — in spite of 
occasional backslidings, of which we 
have been very acutely conscious in the 
case of our neighbours, and perhaps 



30 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

sometimes a little suspicious even as 
regards our own proceedings. 

But how stands Germany towards this 
ideal — modern Germany, the German 
Empire under Prussian hegemony and 
Prussian inspiration? She gives it the 
go-by altogether. She gives the go- 
by to the rights of her neighbours . Per- 
suaded apparently by her philosophers 
and historians that she possesses a par- 
ticular brand of " culture " which is far 
superior to any other in the world, she 
sees her duty towards the community 
of nations as consisting solely in com- 
pelling as many of them as she can to 
become, willy-nilly, partakers of this 
culture — in ** stamping [as General von 
Bernhardi says] a great part of humanity 
with the impress of the German spirit." 
In the pursuit of this end war is, we 
are told, not only a necessity but a duty, 
a moral obligation and a condition of 
national well-being. " The inevitable - 
ness, the idealism, and the blessing of 
war, as an indispensable and stimulating 
law of development, must be repeatedly 



GKEAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 31 

emphasized." Might is the supreme 
Right, victory the supreme and suffi- 
cient justification. German culture must 
spread. It can spread only through 
German power. And German power 
depends " on two points : firstly, how 
many millions of men in the world speak 
German ; secondly, how many of them 
are politically members of the German 
Empire." And there are not nearly 
enough at present — in General von 
Bernhardi's opinion. 

Nothing limits the right to bring 
about this German ideal. It is above 
all other rights ; it is a Super-Right. 
No plea of nationality, of freedom, of 
long prescription, of the desire of the 
governed, of international law, or of 
express treaty can bind or overrule it. 
On the contrary, it overrules them all. 
Salus populij suprema lex. No doubt. 
But the salvation of the German people 
seems quite incompatible with the per- 
manent or secure salvation of anybody 
else ! 

Well, you may call this new German 



32 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

ideal what you please. You may call 
it grandiose and dazzling. You may call 
it immoral and unscrupulous. If you 
are at all acquainted with " cultures," 
ancient and modern, which are not con- 
ceived on the lines of this new German 
*' culture," you may call it impudent and 
absurd. But there is one thing you must 
call this ideal, and that is — dangerous. 

Such part of the globe as it cannot 
make a German province it inevitably 
makes an armed camp. 

If proof of this be needed — though, 
indeed, the proof of it starts to the eyes 
of any nation that does not wish to 
become a German province if it can 
help it — let us go back to England's 
" unpardonable blunder," and try to see 
what would have happened if she had 
not committed it — if, on the contrary, 
she had supported the Southern States 
against the North. Of course we must 
assume — though it is a considerable 
assumption — that her intervention would 
have been successful, that with her help 
the Southern States would have sue- 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 33 

ceeded in establishing and maintaining 
their independence. As a result, where 
there are now the United States of 
America, there would be two inde- 
pendent nations — and of course, on 
German principles, armed nations, each 
trying to be stronger than the other, 
to get the better of the other, perhaps 
to impose {more Gertnanlco) their 
" culture " on the other. Herein, says 
General von Bernhardi, would lie the 
triumph of British policy. The Northern 
nation and the Southern nation, as busy 
with one another as were the proverbial 
Kilkenny cats, would have no surplus 
time or energy to spend in interfering 
with the designs or the prosperity of 
Great Britain. The North might hate, 
but she would be impotent. The South 
might forget her gratitude (the General 
cannot afford, on his principles, to rely 
on national gratitude), but she would 
have her hands full all the same. 

But still— is the General quite so right 
as he thinks? Could England be sure 
of being able to stand by smiling — and 



34 THE. NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

raking in the dollars? If gratitude can 
be forgotten, so can an old quarrel — 
when it pays to forget it. Would the 
British Government be safe in ignoring 
the chance that some day the North 
would say to the South : ** Our profit 
doesn't lie in keeping up this old 
quarrel or in worrying one another. 
Let us do a deal. You shall be free 
to * expand ' as much as you like south- 
wards — in Mexico, in Central America, 
where you will down there. In return 
let us be free to expand northwards. 
We shall both find that a much better 
game than cutting one another's throats 
for England's profit " ? 

If England did sufficient justice to 
America's common sense to conceive of 
such an arrangement as even possible, 
what must be her imperative safeguard 
against the possibility? There is only 
one answer : an armed Canada — Canada 
armed to the teeth along her immense 
frontier, armed on the Great Lakes, and, 
pending at least a fuller growth of her 
strength, demanding and engrossing no 



GREAT BRITAIN'S BLUNDER 35 

small part of the resources of the Mother 
Country for her defence. 

Whether this development would be 
better for England than the present 
state of affairs I will not discuss. I 
think I hardly need. Anyhow, it is 
enough for my purpose to point out by 
this example whither Bernhardian prin- 
ciples and policy tend. 

There are two friendly peoples now 
on the continent of North America. If 
England had not committed her " un- 
pardonable blunder," there would have 
been three armed camps. 

So the new German ideal works out 
in this example. And it would work 
out in the same way in others. The 
nation that will not be a German 
province must be an armed camp. 

When the free nations realize this, 
they will make their choice between the 
two ideals of national policy in inter- 
national affairs which are to-day pre- 
sented for their consideration. 



Ill 

PAPER BULWARKS 

SURELY no statesman holding high 
and responsible place ever let the cat 
out of the bag so completely as the 
German Imperial Chancellor in his now 
world-famous phrase about the " scrap 
of paper " ! 

Of course the appearance of the 
animal caused no surprise in Germany 
—no surprise, at least, to the enthusiastic 
disciples of Treitschke and Bernhardi, 
who number, as Professor Cramb tells 
us, their tens of thousands in Germany. 
They knew the colour of the animal quite 
well beforehand ; they knew what its 
claws were like—to say nothing of its 
whiskers, which must surely be pictured 
with a truly Imperial upward twist- 1 
Cats of the same colour stalk through 

36 



PAPER BULWARKS 37 

the writings of their school of thought. 
*' Neutrality is a paper bulwark," says 
Bernhardi. Treaties hold good rebus 
sic stantibus— which, if you drag it 
from what Gibbon calls *' the decent 
obscurity of a learned language," means 
*' while perfectly convenient." No, the 
colour of the Chancellor's cat was no 
surprise to them. They were quite 
familiar with the breed. 

But they are surprised— genuinely 
surprised, I believe, though at first 
sight it seems difficult to believe — that 
anybody else should feel differently. 
They are so imbued with the virtue of 
their own doctrine — with its ** religion 
of valour " and its *' return to Odin," 
and so forth— that they are unable to 
understand how it can be questioned 
save by fools, hypocrites, or cowards. 
They do not think the British fools ; 
they do think them hypocrites ; they do 
think them cowards— or did. And thus 
in their eyes the position we profess as 
to Belgian neutrality is abundantly 
explained. 



38 THE NEW (GEKMAN) TESTAMENT 

But there are signs that they are 
beginning to see that the colour and 
claws of the Chancellor's cat are rather 
alarming to other people — rather alarm- 
ing, or at least rather startling, to the 
free peoples, large and small ; rather 
questionable to men and women who 
have not returned to Odin, but still take 
their standards from another source of 
religious and ethical inspiration. So 
there is an attempt to put rather a 
different colour on the cat, perhaps to 
thrust it back into the bag — half-way 
back, anyhow, so that claws and 
whiskers may be hidden, even if the 
colour remains obstinately apparent. 
Accordingly, arguments of other than 
the plain Treitschke-Bernhardi order are 
adduced by German writers and their 
apologists. 

One of them takes the familiar 
tu quoque form— the old " You're 
another I " of our childish days. If 
Germany had not violated the neutrality 
of Belgium, France and Great Britain 
would have. 



PAPER BULWARKS 39 

As to this, it may be observed first 
— and the remark apphes to both Powers 
— that such counter-charges are easy to 
bring — so easy that they carry no 
weight, unless evidence in support of 
them is produced. Such evidence the 
German Government has declared itself 
to possess. It has been challenged to 
produce it. Until it does so, the pre- 
sumption would seem to be that this 
retort is designed for consumption by 
those, in Germany itself and in neutral 
countries, whose stomachs find the un- 
diluted doctrine of the " scrap of paper " 
rather strong meat, difficult of digestion 
and threatening, perhaps, after-effects of 
an unpleasant order. 

But with regard to Great Britain, at 
least, we may say more than this. The 
charge, if advanced in good faith and 
sincerity, shows an astonishing ignor- 
ance of the state of opinion in this 
country. It is safe to say that no British 
Government (and, I may add in passing, 
least of all a Liberal Government, de- 
pending so largely as it does on pacific 



40 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

opinion and on the support of the friends 
of the smaller nations) would or could 
have taken such a step. It would 
almost certainly have been suicidal to 
the Government itself. It would cer- 
tainly have rent public opinion in twain 
and fatally impaired the support which 
the nation at large now accords enthu- 
siastically to the policy of His Majesty's 
Government. It would, in the eyes of 
the greater part of the nation — I believe 
in the eyes of practically the whole 
nation — have stamped on our friendship 
with France a shameful and fatal stain. 
We could not have fought the war in 
good heart after it. 

Let us pass to another argument 
employed by the apologists, and de- 
serving of notice for its ingenuity at 
least. The " scrap of paper " — or, in 
other and more formal language, the 
Quintuple Treaty of London (April 19, 
1839) between Great Britain, Austria, 
France, Russia, and Prussia on the one 
hand, and the Netherlands on the other 
— was not, it is said, in its true nature 



PAPER BULWARKS 41 

and essence a Treaty with Belgium, but 
a Treaty about Belgium. The only 
rights or obligations created by it were 
mutual rights and obligations between 
the contracting parties. These came to 
an end, ipso facto, with the existence 
of a state of war between the contract- 
ing parties. And Belgium was left quite 
out in the cold 1 

This somewhat technical argument 
takes us a long way from the beautiful 
simplicity of the " scrap -of -paper " 
doctrine. But it is worth a moment's 
examination . 

What does Article VII of the Quin- 
tuple Treaty say ? " Belgium shall 
form a State independent and perpetu- 
ally neutral. It is under obligation to 
observe neutrality towards all other 
States." 

Now it cannot be denied that Belgium 
was in form a signatory to the Treaty 
with the five Powers. But more than 
this : in substance also she was plainly 
a party, and for the reason that the 
Treaty not only grants her a right — the 



42 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

right of immunity from attack— but 
imposes on her an obhgation — the obli- 
gation not to attack others. If she 
observes the obhgation, she is entitled 
to rely on the right. A promise is given 
to her on a consideration. She has 
conformed to her obligation ; she has 
carried out the condition. With what 
face is she now to be told that the right 
is illusory because other parties to the 
Treaty have quarrelled? 

Moreover, against what contingency 
was the Treaty directed? In what case 
was its operation contemplated? Pre- 
cisely in the case which arose in 1870 
and which has now arisen again in 
1914 — the case of war between two 
or more of the contracting parties. It 
is a pretty argument which tells us that 
a Treaty is abrogated by the existence 
of the precise state of affairs which it 
was intended to meet, and under which 
alone it could have any virtue or effect 1 
Whatever apologists in a tight place 
may be forced to do, statesmen do not 
stultify themselves in that fashion. 



PAPER BULWARKS 43 

Finally, if Germany either would or 
could have relied on any such self- 
destructive plea as this, she has a 
witness against her, whom she herself 
cannot refuse to hear, whom the rest 
of the world was accustomed to hear 
with a deference not unmingled with 
apprehension. That witness is the 
greatest of Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg's 
predecessors. 

When in 1870 trouble came about 
between France and Prussia, Great 
Britain took a very definite line about 
the neutrality of Belgium. She plainly 
intimated that, in the case of one 
belligerent respecting, while the other 
violated, that neutrality, the United 
Kingdom would take part with the 
beUigerent respecting the neutrality 
against the other. And treaties in 
this sense were made with France and 
with Prussia — in which latter, by the 
way, the King of Prussia expressed him- 
self as being desirous of " recording by 
a solemn act his fixed determination 
to maintain the independence and 



U THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

neutrality of Belgium as provided in 
Article VII of the Treaty signed in 
London on the 19th April, 1839" — 
our old friend the *' scrap of paper." 

But what is important for our point 
is that Prince Bismarck, acting for his 
Sovereign, not only gave assurances to 
and made a treaty with Great Britain. 
Me gave assurances to Belgium also. 
And the terms of the assurance are 
worth setting out here : — 

Berlin, 
le 22 JuiUet, 1870. 
M. LE MiNISTRE,— 

Confirmant mes assurances ver- 
bales, j'ai I'honneur de vous donner 
par ecrit la declaration, surabon- 
dante en presence des Trait^s en 
vigueur, que la Confederation du 
Nord et ses allies respecteront la 
neutralite de la Belgique, bien en- 
tendu qu'elle sera respect^e par 
I'autre partie bellig^rante. 
Agreez, etc., 

Von Bismarck 
Baron Nothomb 



PAPER BULWARKS 45 

Which being translated runs : ** Con- 
firming my verbal assurance, I have the 
honour to give a declaration in writing 
— superfluous having regard to the 
Treaties in existence — that the Con- 
federation of the North and its allies 
will respect the neutrality of Belgium, 
it being well understood that that 
neutrality will be respected by the 
other belligerent Power." 

And who was this Baron Nothomb, 
to whom this assurance is given? Not 
the representative of any of the Powers 
signing the Treaty, but the Belgian 
Minister In Berlin. 

So that our witness, Prince Bismarck 
himself, plainly recognized two things :— 

1 . The validity of the Treaty of 

1839- 

2. The fact that not only the signa- 
tory Powers but also Belgium had a 
right to ask and receive assurances that 
the Treaty would be respected, that her 
right would be protected if her obliga- 
tion were observed. 

What was Prince Bismarck's view in 



46 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

1870 is Great Britain's view in 19 14. 
Perhaps that is enough to say about it. 

But since we have been talking about 
1870 it may be of interest to set out 
another document dating from the same 
time. It is not long, and recent events 
give it interest. We have seen what 
the German Imperial Chancellor thinks 
of the Treaty ; we have seen what his 
great predecessor thought of it ; let us 
see how the Belgians themselves looked 
at it in that same year 1870. 

Here is the copy of an address from 
the Mayor and Communal Council of 
the City of Brussels to Queen Victoria, 
dated the 30th August, 1870. It 
relates to Great Britain's intimation — 
already referred to — that if one belli- 
gerent respected, while the other 
violated, Belgium's neutrality, she would 
take part with the former against the 
latter : — 



PAPER BULWARKS 47 



MAYOR OF BRUSSELS TO QUEEN 
VICTORIA 

30TH August, 1870 
[ Translation . ] 

Your Majesty,— 

The great and noble people over 
whose destinies you preside has 
just given a further proof of its 
benevolent sentiments towards our 
country. 

In the midst of the grave events 
which shake the foundations of 
ancient Europe the Government of 
Your Majesty, conscious of the 
obligations contracted by the Sig- 
natories to the Treaty of 1839, ^^s 
taken the initiative in approaching 
the Powers which are parties to 
that Treaty, with a view to obtain- 
ing a new and efficacious confirma- 
tion of the neutrality of Belgium. 

The voice of the English nation 
has been heard above the din of 



48 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

arms : it has asserted the principles 
of justice and right. 

Next to the unalterable attach- 
ment of the Belgian people to their 
independence, the liveliest senti- 
ment which fills their hearts is that 
of an imperishable gratitude. 

We think that Your Majesty and 
the people of Great Britain will 
value the evidence of their grati- 
tude now offered in the name of 
a nation, free and prosperous, 
which has cultivated with wisdom 
and moderation for nearly half a 
century institutions similar to those 
of the United Kingdom. 

The Municipal Council of the 
Capital express the unanimous 
sentiments of the population in 
assuring Your Majesty of its pro- 
found and respectful gratitude. 

Such is the light in which the people 
of Belgium looked at the ** scrap of 
paper." And if the terms in which the 
Mayor of Brussels refers to the people 



PAPER BULWARKS 49 

of Great Britain are so handsome that 
an Englishman blushes to drag them 
from the archives of the past and repeat 
them here — well, it can only be said 
that it is easy to suppose circumstances 
under which he would have had to 
blush over them much more severely, 
and under which the Mayor of Brussels 
could not have used to King George 
the words which his predecessor ad- 
dressed to Queen Victoria. He must 
have used words extremely different — 
and better, perhaps, left to the 
imagination . 

After all, it is pleasant to think that 
the King and people of Great Britain 
could still look that old Mayor of 
Brussels in the face. As in 1870, so 
now they are giving a new and, please 
God, an efficacious confirmation of the 
neutrality of Belgium — so that some day, 
before long perhaps, the present Mayor 
of Brussels may endorse some of the 
things his predecessor said. And praise 
from the gallant M. Max would be 
praise indeed I 



IV 
EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 

THERE are many things which 
General von Bernhardi, whose book 
is by now familiar to most of us by 
repute at least, is willing to promise the 
German people if only they will fall 
down and worship the ideal of national 
life and policy which he sets before 
them. It is true that the things belong 
for the moment to other people ; but 
that can soon be put right. The fruit 
— French plums or British peaches — is 
ripe ; it needs only a strong and resolute 
hand to pluck it. 

But amongst all his promises there 
is one omission . I do not know whether 
or how far it may seem a remarkable 
omission in German eyes ; to an 

50 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 51 

Englishman it certainly appears so, 
and, as I should suppose, would so 
appear to a Frenchman or an American. 
Amongst all the rewards of victory 
which he dangles before the eyes of the 
conquering Germans, the irresistible race 
which is to have so much to say about 
other people's affairs, we look in vain 
for any promise that they are to have 
what an American, a Frenchman, or an 
Englishman would consider an adequate 
control of their own ! 

On the contrary, General von Bern- 
hardi discourages any such idea — and 
that in round terms. " No people," he 
remarks bluntly, " is so little qualified 
as the German to direct its own desti- 
nies, whether in a parliamentarian or 
in a republican Constitution ; to no 
people is the customary liberal pattern 
so inappropriate as to us. A glance 
at the Reichstag will show how com- 
pletely this conviction, which is forced 
on us by a study of German history, 
holds good to-day." 

No people so little qualified to direct 



52 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

its own destinies 1 An extreme saying ! 
Not even those naughty Servians? Not 
the Turks? Not the Albanians, who so 
failed to appreciate a German prince? 
If what the General says be true, it 
would suggest to an Englishman — and 
not less to a citizen of other countries 
whose peoples do " direct their own 
destinies " — that the German " culture '* 
has broken down somewhere. Because 
to such a citizen — even as to an 
Athenian of old — a " culture " that 
leaves the citizens unfit for and in- 
capable of self-government fails in the 
first and most vital function of a national 
culture . 

No doubts on this score afflict the 
General. He goes on to point out, quite 
contentedly, that " the German people 
has always been incapable of great acts 
for the common interest except under 
the irresistible pressure of external con- 
ditions, as in the rising of 1813, or 
under the leadership of powerful per- 
sonalities. . . ." " We must take care, 
then," he proceeds, ** that such men are 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 53 

assured the possibility of acting with a 
confident and free hand to accomphsh 
great ends through and for our people. 
Within these limits it is in harmony 
with the German character to allow 
personality to have a free course 
for the fullest development of all 
individual forces and capacities, of 
all spiritual, scientific, and artistic 
aims." 

It sounds very fine. What does it 
come to? Powerful Personalities, acting 
with confident and free hands, are to 
do the governing — to direct the desti- 
nies — while the German people, of all 
the most unfitted for this task, are to 
develop their capacities in intellectual 
pursuits " within these limits " — that is 
to say, subject to not interfering with 
the confident and free hands of the 
Powerful Personalities. That is put 
forward as the ideal for the nation whose 
ideals are to direct and govern as much 
of the world as possible. 

What is this but the watchword — or 
the catchword — of every *' benevolent 



54 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

despotism," of every '* enlightened aris- 
tocracy," since history began? ** Occupy 
yourselves with the arts and sciences — 
leave politics to me," has been the 
command of the despot (whether an 
individual or a caste) through all the 
ages. It is the command of General 
von Bernhardi and his caste to his 
countrymen to-day. Will they — do they 
— accept it? 

A citizen of a free and self-governing 
country — in the full sense in which an 
American, a Frenchman, or an English- 
man (to name no other nationalities, 
though, happily, there are many others 
who could be named) understands 
these words— finds it hard to believe 
that they do— at all events, that 
they will — accept it permanently, for 
good and all. "You cannot govern 
yourselves — you are the most hopeless 
of all nations at that. But we — the 
Powerful Prussian Personalities — will 
govern you with confident and free 
hands, and govern half the world for 
you into the bargain. Only keep 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 55 

your hands off politics— and we will 
fill them with the rich fruits of 
world-power ! " 

It is a splendid bribe ; that cannot 
be denied — panem et circenses with a 
vengeance ! — and offered, not this time 
to the demoralized mob of a decadent 
capital, as the Caesars offered " bread 
and games " to the rabble of Rome, but 
to the whole of a civilized, cultured, in- 
tellectual people — to the people who, 
however incapable of directing their own 
destinies, are chosen by the German God 
to control the destinies of so many other 
people ! 

A big bribe, indeed ! Nobody can 
appreciate its magnitude better than 
the nations which (if all goes well) 
are to have the privilege of pro- 
viding the wherewithal to enable the 
General and his friends to redeem their 
promises. 

Can the General and his friends 
" deliver the goods " ? Will the German 
people, dazzled as they now seem to be 
by the glittering prize held before their 



56 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

eyes, be permanently content with the 
barter of liberty at home for Empire 
abroad? I will not attempt to answer 
these questions. Time must give the 
answer — time and the stricken field. 
Let us assume the answers that the 
General would like. In the words of 
his famous alternative, let it be — for 
the sake of this argument— world-power 
for Germany, and not downfall ; and 
we will stifle the mild suggestion 
that a via media was really open to 
Germany if she had been content to 
take it. 

On this hypothesis, then, what is the 
look-out for the rest of the world, and 
especially for that " great part of 
humanity " which is to be " stamped 
with the impress of the German spirit " 
—that spirit which, among its other 
manifestations, manifests a willingness 
to accept Bernhardi's bribe on Bern- 
hardi's terms? 

Well, anyhow, the great part of 
humanity, when duly stamped, can 
hardly expect to be better off than 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 57 

the Germans themselves. What is sauce 
for the conquering goose (I mean 
no disrespect by recalling the old 
proverb) will certainly be sauce for 
the conquered gander. If the home 
Empire is unfit to direct its own 
destinies, the outlying dominions will 
not be allowed to direct theirs. That 
seems plain without much argument — 
indeed to suggest anything else might 
well set the home Empire on a recon- 
sideration of its bargain. What the out- 
lying dominions— the bases of the world- 
power — must expect is clearly an export 
of Powerful Personalities to direct their 
destinies with confident and free hands. 
Other Powers send out Governors : the 
British Empire does. But the German 
Empire overseas is not to be like the 
British Empire overseas ; for this latter 
we know from Bernhardi's master — the 
great Treitschke himself — is a sham, 
" wholly a sham, wholly rotten." These 
Powerful Personalities will not be the 
representatives of a Constitutional 
Monarch, presiding over but not ruling 



58 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

free and self-governing communities. 
They will be of the same type as the 
rulers at home. The bargain which is 
good enough for the home Empire 
will be good enough for the German 
Dominions overseas. 

They promise to be pleasant, restful 
neighbours, these German Dominions 
overseas, with their destinies directed by 
Powerful Personalities trained in Bern- 
hardian ideas and Bernhardian views of 
the German " Mission." Their Right 
will be Might, their Religion will be 
Valour, their Treaties — but we know by 
now all about that. They are to 
be Little Berlins — the description has 
already been applied by a writer of 
authority to the German colonies exist- 
ing before the war. They are to be 
reproductions of the Great Berlin, of the 
German Empire at home — the German 
Empire of Bernhardi's and Treitschke's 
ideal — where the nation is the Army, aind 
the Army is the nation, and war is a 
moral obligation ; where the creed is 
" Live dangerously " and the Beatitude 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 59 

'* Blessed are the warmakers, for they 
shall be called, if not the children of 
Jahve, the children of Odin, who is 
greater than Jahve." And it may be 
supposed their Litany will run, " To 
battle, and murder, and sudden death. 
Good Lord, deliver us " — and, a fortiori^ 
" our enemies ! " 

One closes General von Bernhardi's 
book with a strange mixture of feelings. 
Its attitude and its teaching — the whole 
spirit which informs and animates it — 
seem at once so formidable and so pre- 
posterous. It is like some nightmare 
in which everything is turned upside 
down, all values changed, all standards 
reversed — a sort of " Alice in Wonder- 
land " political faith. If it were all only 
a bad dream ! And surely that is what 
we may hope and pray that it is for 
the German peoples themselves, a bad 
dream from which they will one day 
awake — awake to repudiate Bernhardi's 
bribe and Bernhardi's bargain, to take 
their own destinies into their own 
hands, and to assume their proper and 



60 THE NEW (GERMAN) TESTAMENT 

honourable place in the community of 
nations . 

Such an awakening must, of a surety, 
be forced on Germany some day — 
whether from without or from within. 
The hope and the faith in such an 
awakening are the silver lining to the 
dark cloud of strife which broods over 
the world to-day. 

But whatever our feelings may and 
must be at the present time about the 
nation to which he belongs, I cannot 
part from the General himself wholly 
in anger. He is, all said and done, a 
gallant controversialist. His is the 
massed frontal attack ; there are no 
subtle attempts to outflank your prin- 
ciples or get round your apprehensions. 
He goes full tilt at them — horse, foot, 
and artillery. There never was such 
a man for saying things which you 
might imagine that he would be content 
with thinking — never such a man for 
telling you exactly what you may expect 
if he has his way with you ! In virtue 
of these characteristics he is very 



EMPIRE— AND LIBERTY? 61 

valuable at this juncture of affairs. 
Every man and woman of independent 
mind should read, mark, learn, and in- 
wardly digest him. The wider circula- 
tion his book obtains and the more 
students he has, the better will the world 
understand what this war is really about, 
and what turns on the issue of it. 



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